A company founded by several MIT engineers launched free Internet Explorer and Firefox plug-ins Wednesday that reveal dangerous Web sites listed by popular search engines.

With the plug-ins installed, users see green, yellow, or red tags beside hits in search results on Google, MSN, and Yahoo, said Boston-based SiteAdvisor. The tags — red represents sites that heavily spam visitors, host spyware and adware, or hijack browser home pages — give users a heads-up before they click on a link.

The company’s ratings were with the help of automated Web spiders, which crawled the millions of sites that represent more than 95 percent of the Internet’s total traffic. Nearly half a million downloads were analyzed for spyware and other malicious code, and 1.3 million registrations were logged using unique e-mail address to track spam from each site source.

Source: informationweek

The British Government has been named “Villain of the Year” by a group of the world’s largest internet companies after pushing through laws across Europe that will force firms to store more information on their customers’ web and telephone use.

At an awards ceremony in London last night, the Internet Service Provider Association said the Government had used its presidency of the European Union in 2005 to push through EU-wide data retention laws that will force ISPs and telecoms companies “to retain more data for longer without proper impact assessment”.

The association’s members, which include telecoms providers such as BT as well as internet giants such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, are already among the biggest repositories of personal data in the world.

Under the legislation, which was given final approval in Brussels this week, they will keep details of their European customers’ telephone calls and internet use for up to two years.

The Government has argued that such information is a crucial weapon in the fight against terrorism. Its support for the new EU measures measures followed the London bombings in July.

However, an ISPA spokesman told Times Online: “There are strong concerns that these data retention measures would be used for wider purposes than just terrorism.

“There is lot of confusion here, on issues such as data protection and human rights. It is not simply a matter of costs.”

The body has suggested that data could potentially be made available to groups other than the security forces, in moves that could breach people’s privacy.

Source: timesonline

KIRYAT GAT, Israel — Intel Corp. used a ground-breaking ceremony here to promote its Israeli activities. The chip maker said it exported $1.19 billion from Israel in 2005, up 1.8 percent from 2004. The total represents 14 percent of Israel’s high-tech exports.

The Israeli government will contributed $525 million toward construction of Intel’s new plant, which will produce 45-nm chips. Intel’s investment is the largest ever by an industrial corporation in Israel. The new plant is scheduled to open in 2008. It will upgrade Intel’s existing facility here, and will create about 4,400 jobs.

Intel Chairman Craig Barret said the company now has more employees in Israel than in Silicon Valley. Intel established its first overseas development center in Haifa in 1974. It also has manufacturing, research and sales facilities in Jerusalem and in central and northern Israel, employing a total of 6,700 people at six locations.

Meanwhile, Google has also set up its first Middle East R&D center in Haifa. The development center will be run by Yoelle Maarek, a 17-year veteran of IBM Research, where she most recently served as senior manager of the information and media technologies department.

Google currently has overseas R&D operations in Tokyo, Zurich and Bangalore, India. The Google Israel R&D center will be the first of its kind in the Middle East.

Vonage Holdings Corp., a leading broadband telephony provider, today announced it has exceeded 1.5 million lines in service.

“With over 1.5 million lines in service, Vonage is demonstrating the viability of VoIP and the demand for our affordable calling plans, flat-rate pricing and unique features,” said Jeffrey A. Citron, Vonage’s chairman and chief strategist.

apan’s fastest supercomputer system began operations on Wednesday at High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK).

The system consists of Hitachi’s supercomputer with a peak performance of 2.15 TFlops and IBM Japan’s Blue Gene Solution with a peak performance of 57.3 TFlops. It is capable of making about 59 trillion calculations per second.

KEK has installed the system for studies on high-energy accelerator science such as elementary particle physics and nuclear physics, researchers said. The institute will ask the public to propose specific themes of research activities using the supercomputer system.

Source: mainichi-msn

Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report on ZDNet, listed some of the upgrade scenarios that will be possible when Windows Vista ships. All three consumer versions - Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate - will be included on the same CD or DVD. You don’t need to go to the store and purchase a new shrink-wrapped box to upgrade; all you have to do is go to Control Panel and run the Windows Anytime Upgrade program.

Source: edbott.com

Zend Technologies, the subject of Oracle acquisition rumors, has updated its implementation of the PHP development language for the giant’s database family.

The updated Zend Core for Oracle allows Oracle Procedural Language SQL (PL/SQL) collection types to be accessed directly from PHP, improving performance.

Zend has worked with both Oracle and IBM to optimize its PHP environment to their databases during the last year. The goal is to improve development and runtime for open source developers whose applications require a database layer.

Source: The Register

Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday.

“What we’re saying is that in six months’ time we’ll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google,” said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant,” he told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.

But being good is not enough to win the hearts and minds of consumers already dedicated to another standard.

Source: Reuters

East Japan Railway Co unveiled its new shinkansen, the Fastech, which is designed to be the world’s fastest bullet train, to the press during a test run on Wednesday.

The Fastech logged 366 kilometers per hour during the test run. JR East plans for the train to run at 360 kph from 2011 when the Tohoku Shinkansen Line, currently linking Tokyo and Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, will be extended further north to Shin-Aomori Station.

Source: crisscross

A Beijing scientist has developed the country’s first flying saucer, Chinese news agency Xinhau reports. The solar-powered nuisance (pictured right) will be ready to take to skies within two years.

Professor Yan Lei of Peking University described his creation: “Unlike conventional aerocraft, which rely on high-speed movement for lifting force and the fuel-powered engine for dynamics, the newly-developed model employs propellers activated by machinery without bearings.”

Lovely. The team hopes the tent-esque unmanned craft will be able to take on tasks previously monopolised by high cost communications satellites.

Source: The Register

Lycos, Inc. today announced the launch of Lycos Games. Lycos lets gamers play what they want, how they want, with a choice of free, pay-for-play, monthly subscription or download selection, via the Lycos Games casual-gaming solution.

“The launch of Lycos Games is another step toward providing consumers access to exclusive content like Albatross18, while giving creators a unique platform to showcase and market original games content,” said Alfred Tolle, chief executive officer of Lycos. “Lycos has been pretty dormant in the games space over the past three years, but in the coming months, we will continue to partner with global companies, to bring exclusive new games content to the U.S., giving our millions of Lycos users access before anyone else.”

Dedicated Lycos Gamesville users will continue to find the same popular Gamesville offerings, under the umbrella of Lycos Games. To complement its popular proprietary Gamesville content, Lycos Games now offers traditional tournament-style games for cash and prizes, and a revolutionary level of community features including avatars, leader boards and private gaming leagues from SkillJam, making the Lycos gaming platform one of the most comprehensive casual gaming environments online today.

In the coming weeks, Lycos will continue to introduce partners providing additional content and digital media platforms, further enhancing Lycos’ strategy gearing itself towards independent publishers.

Ever feel like you’re not making good enough use of your feet when you’re catching up on your e-mail or sorting through all those digital pictures you took on that last vacation?

Computer scientists in Microsoft Corp.’s research division have developed a color-coded “dance pad” with buttons you can tap with your feet — or jump on — to scroll through electronic files.

It may never make it to store shelves, but that’s no concern to Microsoft, which spends billions of dollars a year researching far-out technologies without worrying about whether the gizmos will ever make it to store shelves.

Every year, the software giant holds an internal trade show where hundreds of researchers show off their work.

Source: AP